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FARGO — A group will assemble next week at North Dakota State University to code drone flight patterns and develop virtual reality games. The event isn't a workshop for college students or professional coders and engineers.

Recently I was invited to speak to a group of young women involved in uCodeGirl, a nonprofit organization that empowers young girls through enrichment programs to pursue opportunities in technology careers. Learn more about uCodeGirl. Their leaders asked me to speak on leadership traits. As I put together information to share with these young women, I wanted to raise my sword for all women and continue the dialogue of how we can improve our statistics in leadership roles.

In a recent Fargo INC! roundtable on women in tech, one of the women summarized her mindset when speaking to and working with young girls in STEM, “Be who you needed when you were younger.” It underscored perfectly what some see as one of the greatest deficiencies within the tech community: a lack of visibility and access to women working in STEM fields. Local nonprofit, uCodeGirl, which works to increase the participation of young girls in tech careers, is working to help change that with its new program, “Crack the Code: STEM Mentorship for Girls.” The goal of the program is to nurture and support female students’ pursuit of STEM academic success and career aspirations. More...

FARGO — Seventh grader Zoe Bundy knows what it's like to feel outnumbered. When she joined Tech Leaders at Discovery Middle School last year, she was the only girl in a class of 29. That ratio improved over the summer when the aspiring software engineer attended "Crack The Code: Summer Tech Camp for Girls" through uCodeGirl, a Fargo-based nonprofit dedicated to empowering young girls to build confidence and pursue careers in technology.

At the summer camp, Bundy worked on robotics, web and app design. "What did I like about uCodeGirl summer session? Everything!" she says. "I was very happy to find a coding camp and realize I wasn't the only girl who liked it." More...

uCodeGirl offers pathways to technology careers for teen girls by tapping into their curiosity, skills, and potential.

uCodeGirl is making technology fun, relevant, and accessible. Girls learn leadership skills and an entrepreneurial mindset. Leading women in technology provide mentoring.

uCodeGirl also helps girls to learn hands-on skills. They provide a three-week summer camp where the girls can experiment with technology to solve their own problems. In the process, they help the girls to build a pathway to a career in technology. More...

A high percentage of young girls show interest in tech and STEM fields, but when the time comes to choose a degree to pursue, they change their minds. Women have the desired and skills to greatly influence the tech community, along with a much-needed perspective. This month, we met up with local women in tech to discuss the cover-page question, as well as obstacles and possible solutions to the challenges facing women in the tech industry.

The wave of technological advancements in the fourth industrial revolution is evolving at an exponential pace, disrupting almost every industry and transforming enter systems of production, management and governance. With the progression of machine learning, the internet of integrated things, robotics and quantum computing, the future is already here. How can we prepare the new generation (with added emphasis on girls) to cope with the smarts of the machines?

MOORHEAD—A tech camp in the metro is hoping to inspire young women to break the stereotype—and later, pursue careers in STEM fields.

"Crack the Code" from uCodeGirl is helping teen girls get involved in male-dominated fields like engineering or math.

This week, 40 young girls are learning about how to be a leader, along with skills like coding in the 2 week long camp.

They start by coming up with a problem, and then spend the rest of time cracking the code on how to fix it.

"I founded uCodeGirl for the same purpose of bringing girls together, and to see this many girls come committed to take a two week session on coding, it's really amazing." says uCodeGirl Next year, the organization hopes to expand the program to 1-hundred students.

FARGO—Madison Christensen was the only girl in the sixth-grade tech club at Agassiz Middle School in 2004. Her friends didn't share or understand her interest in computers, but her brother encouraged her to stick with it.

"I just remember my brother saying, 'Maddie, if you like it, do it. You don't need to follow what other people are doing,' " Christensen said. "I'm glad he did that."

Today, she is a successful design and marketing web developer for Intelligent InSites. She also devotes time to encourage other young girls through her involvement with uCodeGirl, a nonprofit established to increase the participation of girls in technology careers.

I was a teen girl in college majoring in Statistics in Ethiopia, determined to make formulas, numbers, and probabilities my friends when I saw my name listed, among others, on the bulletin board of the Mathematics Department. I had to ask our math professor, the department head, about it.